"the evilest thing that Google has ever done is put that red box on the search-results page. Every Google search now says to me: “we know you’re in the middle of searching for something, but we think that you might instead like to immediately know that somebody that you don’t know has followed you on Google+, so we’ve made a bright red box — the most eye catching and animated thing on the page, just so you know.” Google’s not doing this because Google+ has actual, relevant information that requires my immediate attention. If they were interested in that, they’d give me actual control over what goes into that red box, or give me the ability to shut it off entirely. No — they’re doing this because they want me to use Google+ more, so that they can say that they boosted “user engagement on Google+” on their next earnings call. Besides being disrespectful to your attention, notifications like this do something else that’s much more nefarious: they train you to be a passive consumer of information rather than an active one. If we don’t control the notifications we’re receiving, we’re forced to react to them: from Google’s big red box, to Living Social’s notification for a deal on backwaxing. Left at the default, we create an economy of sensational notifications, with the brightest minds of our generation trying to figure out how to get us to click on the next command for our attention. Can you imagine what would happen if they were instead focused on providing us content worthy of it?"

"If none of us ever had to work, I think that our activities would cluster into three areas: art, interpersonal interaction and discovery (science, academic research, curiosity). While this is a much longer discussion, I worry that our community is aiming to make technology and content consumption our primary activity, instead of helping us engage in these creative and personal endeavors."

"

I’ve started appreciating traditional business-customer relationships more than ever. I enjoy paying for things because it’s an explicit business transaction. There’s nothing phony about it.

Apple doesn’t give me an iPad because they want to be friends with me. They give me an iPad because I pay them for an iPad. My accountant doesn’t do my taxes because he’s a philanthropist. I pay him to do my taxes.

With money, comes accountability to the customer. If my iPad stops working, Apple has to answer to me. If my tax return has errors, my accountant will be answering questions.

No one is answering my questions at Google, Facebook, et al. Why would they? They have customers to attend to, and I’m not one of them.

"

"

How does email have such staying power?

Email is still the killer app. It looks great on all your devices and the user experience is always exactly what you’ve come to expect. Look at the rise of Instapaper, Readability, and Pocket. People love plain, glorious, readable text. Email is also a technology that everyone understands, and it’s personal (if someone wants to respond to me, all they have to do is hit reply). Tweets and status updates flow by and disappear into the black hole that is the Internet of five minutes ago. Interesting links and stories you find in an email newsletter are always right where you left them.

"

"the best emails had some element of editorial (there’s a reason Groupon employs hundreds of writers). Adding editorial means that each time a user opens an email, they get a human voice talking to them. That is powerful.
 
Editorial is easy to overlook for a technology company because it isn’t particularly scalable. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t important."

"Digg was an innovator in one important way: It showed the way with an innovative ad system that was truly native to the experience. For all of Digg’s mistakes, it got the ad part mostly correct. Rather than splash the site with IAB units, Digg chose to make its own ads in 2009, determining that the ads themselves should be promoted content from the site. Advertisers were challenged to adapt to Digg’s community, contributing content that they could then pay to have surfaced more prominently. Users could comment on advertiser posts, promote them and bury them. The more an advertisement was Dugg, the less the advertiser had to pay, rewarding those with good content."

"The difference between Like and other direct response triggers is that the Like is an act of fleeting value that must be earned over and over again. Often, it’s an “in the moment” action that expresses affinity, interest, alignment, and sometimes endorsement."

"@Trackgirl was set up to infiltrate a group of runners. She would scour Twitter for messages with running-themed keywords and post them as if they were her own. Three times a day, she’d pick five people to follow, and she’d always follow back anybody who followed her. Because she seemed connected to the right people, @Trackgirl started to gain followers, who thought her cut-and-paste messages about the agony and the ecstasy of long-distance running were coming from a real person. One day, however, the Twitter bot posted a message saying that she’d hurt her ankle. Soon after, her followers wanted to know if @trackgirl was on the mend. “People were sympathizing with a Python script,” says Marra, a Google product manager who spoke about his work at the MIT-Knight Civic Media Conference in Boston last week."

"Is the future of “home pages” a chronological update of what you’re doing? Or, more precisely, are you the sum of everything you share?"